editorNPR Digital Services RSS Generator 0.94NPR Digital Services RSS Generator 0.94Maureen CorriganMon, 22 Jan 2018 19:19:20 +0000Maureen Corriganhttp://klcc.org
Maureen CorriganIf you've seen the 1945 film noir Mildred Pierce or the 2011 HBO miniseries of the same name (both made from James M. Cain's novel), you know that story punishes Mildred for being a working mother: Her marriage breaks up, her younger daughter takes ill and dies and her elder daughter ,Vida, turns out to be a murderer — all because Mildred wasn't in the home 24/7 to oversee things. I feel about Mildred Pierce the same way I now feel about The Perfect Nanny, by Leila Slimani. I recognize that it's good art and I hate how it guilt-trips working mothers. The last thing working mothers need to be reading in their nanosecond of downtime is this psychological suspense novel about a "perfect" nanny who snaps. But, of course, they're exactly the audience who will be most drawn to it. Slimani's novel, which has just been translated from the French, is inspired by a real life horror: the 2012 murder of two children in New York City by their nanny. In Slimani's hands, the unthinkable becomes art:'The Perfect Nanny' Is The Working Mother's Murderous Nightmare http://klcc.org/post/perfect-nanny-working-mothers-murderous-nightmare
81594 as http://klcc.orgMon, 22 Jan 2018 18:26:00 +0000'The Perfect Nanny' Is The Working Mother's Murderous Nightmare Maureen CorriganDenis Johnson's posthumous short story collection, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, is full of last calls to his readers signaling, "Hurry up please, it's time." Take these eerie sentences spoken by the narrator of a story called "Triumph Over the Grave": It's plain to you that at the time I write this, I'm not dead. But maybe by the time you read it. Of course, those sentences leap off the page because Johnson himself is now dead, carried off by liver cancer in May of 2017 at the age of 67. Johnson always named Walt Whitman as one of his core influences and you can hear Whitman throughout this whole collection. Like those direct addresses to his future readers that Whitman scatters throughout Leaves of Grass , Johnson, in these stories, anticipates talking across the abyss that separates the quick from the dead. In his gritty way, Johnson was a believer in transcendence. His 1992 collection of linked short stories, Jesus' Son, which many critics and readers have anointed as hisPosthumously Published 'Sea Maiden' Affirms Denis Johnson's Eternal Voicehttp://klcc.org/post/posthumously-published-sea-maiden-affirms-denis-johnsons-eternal-voice
80870 as http://klcc.orgTue, 09 Jan 2018 20:03:00 +0000Posthumously Published 'Sea Maiden' Affirms Denis Johnson's Eternal VoiceMaureen CorriganThe audio link above includes an excerpt of Terry Gross' 1989 conversation with Sue Grafton. I think the last time I reviewed one of Sue Grafton's novels was in 2009 . I wrote that U is for Undertow was so good, "it makes me wish there were more than 26 letters at her disposal." Now, of course, that line falls flat. As Grafton's fans know, the writer died of cancer on Dec. 28. Her last novel was Y is for Yesterday, which came out last summer. Turns out, there were only 25 letters at her disposal. In interviews, Grafton always described hitting upon the strategy of alphabet titles for her novels as a whim. She said she got the idea after reading Edward Gorey 's alphabet picture book, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, in which children die in grisly ways ("B is for Basil assaulted by bears," "G is for George smothered under a rug" and so on). But what started out as a lark became — if I may say this of a "mere" mystery series — something defiant, noble even. Because a series that projects itselfA Is For Appreciation: How Sue Grafton Helped Transform The Mystery Genrehttp://klcc.org/post/appreciation-how-sue-grafton-helped-transform-mystery-genre
80497 as http://klcc.orgTue, 02 Jan 2018 19:20:00 +0000A Is For Appreciation: How Sue Grafton Helped Transform The Mystery GenreMaureen CorriganFor a chaotic year, I'm offering a chaotic "Best Books" list — but I think my list is chaotic in a good sense. These books zing off in all directions: They're fresh, unruly and dismissive of the canned and contrived. You can't go wrong with any of these books. As one of Dashiell Hammett's dangerous dames might have said: They're all the bees' knees. Copyright 2017 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan has looked back on a year's worth of reading and decided what books she thinks belong on the top of the pile. Here's Maureen's list of the best books of 2017. MAUREEN CORRIGAN, BYLINE: For a chaotic year, I'm offering a chaotic best books list, but I think my list is chaotic in a good sense. These books zing off in all directions. They're fresh, unruly and dismissive of the canned and contrived. Jesmyn Ward's gorgeous and bleak novel, "Sing, Unburied, Sing," takes readers on the great American road trip. But unlikeMaureen Corrigan Picks Books To Close Out A Chaotic 2017http://klcc.org/post/maureen-corrigan-picks-books-close-out-chaotic-2017
79475 as http://klcc.orgTue, 12 Dec 2017 17:15:00 +0000Maureen Corrigan Picks Books To Close Out A Chaotic 2017Maureen CorriganIn the winter of 1949, a group of judges — including poets T.S. Eliot and Robert Lowell — met to decide the winner of the prestigious Bollingen Prize for the best book of poetry published in the United States the previous year. They gave the prize to Ezra Pound for his collection The Pisan Cantos. Then all hell broke loose. Pound wrote The Pisan Cantos while he was in a prison camp in Italy in 1945. He'd been charged with treason for making more than 200 radio broadcasts from Rome during World War II in which he voiced support for Mussolini and Hitler, and railed against a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. At his 1945 treason trial in Washington, D.C., Pound, who'd suffered a nervous breakdown, was spared the death sentence because his doctors ruled him "mentally unfit" to stand trial. That's why, four years later, when Pound won the Bollingen Prize, he was residing at St. Elizabeths Hospital, a government facility for the mentally ill located in c. The disdainful headline about the awardDo Politics Matter In Poetry? New Biography Explores The Case Of Ezra Pound http://klcc.org/post/do-politics-matter-poetry-new-biography-explores-case-ezra-pound
79019 as http://klcc.orgMon, 04 Dec 2017 18:46:00 +0000Do Politics Matter In Poetry? New Biography Explores The Case Of Ezra Pound Maureen CorriganBefore I finally picked up and read Louise Erdrich's new novel, called Future Home of the Living God, there was a mighty obstacle that had to be faced — an obstacle called The Handmaid's Tale. After Margaret Atwood's magisterial achievement, is there really room for another dystopian feminist novel about the overthrow of democracy by a Christian fundamentalist regime that enslaves fertile women and reduces them to simple vessels of procreation? The somewhat unsettling answer is "Sure!" Erdrich reminds us here that the unthinkable could happen in a variety of ways. Rather than standing in the shadow of Atwood's classic, Erdrich's tense and lyrical new work of speculative fiction stands shoulder-to-braced-shoulder right alongside it. Future Home of the Living God is loosely structured as a series of letters that our heroine, a 26-year-old woman named Cedar Hawk Songmaker, writes to her unborn child. Cedar is impelled to write these letters because, well, something weird is going on.Louise Erdrich Delivers A Dystopian Feminist Thriller In 'Future Home'http://klcc.org/post/louise-erdrich-delivers-dystopian-feminist-thriller-future-home
78001 as http://klcc.orgTue, 14 Nov 2017 20:03:00 +0000Louise Erdrich Delivers A Dystopian Feminist Thriller In 'Future Home'Maureen CorriganSo, is it any good? That's the question everybody asks whenever a celebrity writes a work of fiction. No one expects much from debut novels written by rhinestone-in-the-rough wordsmiths like Fabio or Snooki from Jersey Shore, but the work of other Hollywood stars like James Franco, Lauren Graham and Steve Martin has garnered some serious attention. Which brings us to Tom Hanks' debut collection of short stories called Uncommon Type . So, is it any good? Yeah, I think so. As you'd expect, Hanks isn't interested in experimenting with the short story form. After all, he's a guy who's still obsessed with typewriters; in fact, every one of the 17 stories in this collection features a typewriter. As often happens in large short story collections, a few of these tales should have been "whited out" — and if you don't know what that term means, you're not in the target age range to enjoy most of the remaining stories, a few of which are really wonderful. Hanks' strength as a writer is prettyTom Hanks And Matthew Weiner Cross Over Into The World Of Fictionhttp://klcc.org/post/tom-hanks-and-matthew-weiner-cross-over-world-fiction
77190 as http://klcc.orgMon, 30 Oct 2017 19:43:00 +0000Tom Hanks And Matthew Weiner Cross Over Into The World Of FictionMaureen CorriganNicknames like a real "peasouper" or a "London Particular" make the quintessential foggy day in London Town sound so quaint — an impression that's been intensified in art and literature. Certainly, the London of Sherlock Holmes would be a lot less mysterious without that obscuring fog. Impressionist painter Claude Monet, who famously depicted the Houses of Parliament shrouded in mist, said that: "Without the fog, London would not be a beautiful city. It is the fog that gives it its magnificent breadth." Monet was talking about an added dimension to the city; but "breath," as in human breath, was precisely what the fog stole from London in the terrible winter of 1952. For five days in December of that year, London was blanketed by a yellow toxic vapor that smothered its inhabitants. By the time this poisonous air mass moved on and death records were correctly tallied, some 12,000 people would be recognized as fatalities of what was called The Great Smog of 1952. Journalist Kate Winkler'Death In The Air' Revisits 5 Days When London Was Choked By Poisonous Smoghttp://klcc.org/post/death-air-revisits-5-days-when-london-was-choked-poisonous-smog
76506 as http://klcc.orgTue, 17 Oct 2017 18:52:00 +0000'Death In The Air' Revisits 5 Days When London Was Choked By Poisonous SmogMaureen CorriganIt's a commonplace these days to say that real life has become so unpredictable that it outstrips anything anyone could dream up in fiction. I think I'm guilty of having made that banal observation a few times. But that was before I read The Obama Inheritance, a collection of 15 stories so sly, fresh and Bizarro World witty, they reaffirm the resiliency of the artistic imagination. As editor Gary Phillips explains in his foreword, the idea for The Obama Inheritance was "a cumulative thing" born out of the fact there were so many conspiracy theories generated about President Obama. There were the "birther" stories , the suggestion that President Obama used secret weather machines to create Hurricane Sandy, and on and on. Phillips says, "To many of us, the daily roll out of these preposterous notions about the nation's first black president was laughable." The "us" Phillips refers to are a diverse group of writers in terms of race and reputation; they're practitioners of a variety ofCollection Puts A Playful, Pulpy Twist On Preposterous Stories About Obamahttp://klcc.org/post/collection-puts-playful-pulpy-twist-preposterous-stories-about-obama
76069 as http://klcc.orgMon, 09 Oct 2017 17:33:00 +0000Collection Puts A Playful, Pulpy Twist On Preposterous Stories About ObamaMaureen CorriganSo many great writers have given us so many great quotes in an attempt to capture New York, but I think my favorite is by the legendary New Yorker writer A.J. Liebling: "Before it was anything else," Liebling says, "New York was a seaport, and before anything else, it still is." Jennifer Egan clearly shares Liebling's view in her latest novel, Manhattan Beach. Egan is known for the edgy tone of her work and for her fragmented storylines that require some self-assembly by readers. Indeed, in Egan's powerful 2001 novel, Look at Me, the very face of her main character — a model who's been in a terrible car accident — is broken and tenuously held together by titanium screws. But no such self-conscious soldering is called for in Manhattan Beach. This is a big, traditional historical novel — in the manner of a Ken Follett or Herman Wouk. The sweeping story Egan tells here is intertwined with New York's elemental identity as a seaport, which became more crucial than ever during the SecondJennifer Egan's 'Manhattan Beach' Is A Gorgeous Tribute To NYC And Its Seaport http://klcc.org/post/jennifer-egans-manhattan-beach-gorgeous-tribute-nyc-and-its-seaport
75409 as http://klcc.orgTue, 26 Sep 2017 19:18:00 +0000Jennifer Egan's 'Manhattan Beach' Is A Gorgeous Tribute To NYC And Its Seaport Maureen CorriganFall is when the publishing industry gets serious, when it leaves beach books in the sand and turns to weightier topics. And what could be weightier than the greatest question of all: the meaning of life. Two new books — one a novel; one a (sort of) memoir — tackle that ultimate question through experimental forms of writing. I know, I know: "Experimental writing" is surely one of the least enticing literary terms. But don't be put off, because both of these odd new books offer something special, something that more "broken in" forms of writing can't provide. Nicole Krauss doesn't need to be oversold: Her novels have garnered plenty of awards and she enjoys a celebrity off the page. (She and her ex-husband, Jonathan Safran Foer, were once Brooklyn's reigning literary couple). Like Foer — whose recent novel, Here I Am, was about a disintegrating marriage — Krauss partly draws on their divorce as material for her new novel, Forest Dark. The title derives from Dante's Divine Comedy: Novel 'Forest Dark' And Dog Book 'Afterglow' Consider The Meaning Of Lifehttp://klcc.org/post/novel-forest-dark-and-dog-book-afterglow-consider-meaning-life
75131 as http://klcc.orgWed, 20 Sep 2017 18:15:00 +0000Novel 'Forest Dark' And Dog Book 'Afterglow' Consider The Meaning Of LifeMaureen CorriganAbout halfway through Claire Messud's new novel The Burning Girl , our narrator, a 12-year-old girl named Julia, makes this pronouncement: Sometimes I felt that growing up and being a girl was about learning to be afraid. Not paranoid, exactly, but always alert and aware, like checking out the exits in the movie theater or the fire escape in a hotel. You came to know, in a way you hadn't as a kid, that the body you inhabited was vulnerable, imperfectly fortified. Like most such pronouncements, this one can be picked apart and qualified; but within the tight confines of Messud's novel, the grim truth of Julia's words is indisputable. The Burning Girl reads like an updated Gothic tale — in part, because it has so many of the traditional trappings of the genre (a decaying mansion, an evil guardian, ghosts) and, in part, because it's a novel about the friendship between two adolescent girls — and what life journey could be more Gothic than the passage through adolescence? Julia and herAdolescent Friendship Fades Away In Claire Messud's Gothic 'Burning Girl' http://klcc.org/post/adolescent-friendship-fades-away-claire-messuds-gothic-burning-girl
74705 as http://klcc.orgTue, 12 Sep 2017 17:57:00 +0000Adolescent Friendship Fades Away In Claire Messud's Gothic 'Burning Girl' Maureen CorriganBack in the late 1980s, when I was first starting out as a critic for The Village Voice , one of the books I was assigned was Laura Shapiro's Perfection Salad, a social history of the home economics movement during the turn of the last century. I can't recall many of the other books I reviewed in those days, but Perfection Salad has remained indelibly with me. Shapiro helped break new ground by taking the history of women, housework and cooking seriously, even as her witty and vivid writing style was decidedly un-solemn. Now, some 30 years later, Shapiro has done it again, this time, breaking new ground in the art of biography by taking the adage, "you are what you eat," literally. Shapiro's fascinating new book is called What She Ate, and it focuses on the lives of six women from different centuries and continents — all prominent to different degrees. Among them are Dorothy Wordsworth , the poet's shy, worshipful sister; Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress and 11th-hour wife; and Helen'What She Ate' Reveals The Plates And Palates Of 6 Notable Womenhttp://klcc.org/post/what-she-ate-reveals-plates-and-palates-6-notable-women
72893 as http://klcc.orgWed, 09 Aug 2017 18:15:00 +0000'What She Ate' Reveals The Plates And Palates Of 6 Notable WomenMaureen CorriganMost readers these days who know Chester Himes know him for his detective fiction, novels like The Real Cool Killers and Cotton Comes to Harlem , which were written late in his career during the 1950s and '60s. These hard-boiled stories — featuring black New York City police detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson — are brutal and wildly surreal. But no more brutal and surreal, Himes may have said, than the situation of being black — even of being a prominent black writer — in mid-20th century America. Lawrence P. Jackson's meticulous big new biography of Himes, called simply Chester B. Himes, makes a convincing case for a writer who's always been something of a tough sell. Himes' early literary novels — like his debut, If He Hollers Let Him Go — were dismissed as second-rate social "problem literature" by the young James Baldwin. Of his second novel, The Lonely Crusade, a reviewer in the Atlantic Monthly complained, "Hatred reeks through his pages like yellow bile." ButNew Chester Himes Biography Reveals A Life As Wild As Any Detective Storyhttp://klcc.org/post/new-chester-himes-biography-reveals-life-wild-any-detective-story
72144 as http://klcc.orgWed, 26 Jul 2017 17:45:00 +0000New Chester Himes Biography Reveals A Life As Wild As Any Detective StoryMaureen CorriganA year-long getaway to a Greek island; a week by the sea at an arts colony. Fantasies of escape are the common premise of two new comic novels, both smart and sprightly in style, and both informed by a sad wisdom that echoes John Milton's lines in Paradise Lost: that we carry "troubl'd thoughts" and "hell within [us]`" wherever we go. In Lynn Freed's sly novel The Last Laugh, three wealthy women — who proudly describe themselves as "mad old bags" — decide to share a house together on a sun-drenched island in the Aegean. Here's our narrator, Ruth, on the first page of the novel, describing the motivation for their plan: We'd put passion behind us, we said. ... [T]he blinders were gone, the sport, the spring and sway of the dance, the careless unreasoning madness of it all. Anyway, we said, passion had accomplished its chief work, at least from a biological point of view — children and grandchildren. What we wanted now was peace. Ourselves to ourselves. No service, no duty, no motherly2 Smart New Novels Find Humor In Fantasies Of Escapehttp://klcc.org/post/2-smart-new-novels-find-humor-fantasies-escape
71859 as http://klcc.orgThu, 20 Jul 2017 17:58:00 +00002 Smart New Novels Find Humor In Fantasies Of EscapeMaureen CorriganEver since Peter Minuit bought Manhattan Island from the Native Americans, New York City's character has been defined by money and con artistry. So it is that classic New York stories are always populated by a grifter or two. Francis Spufford is a Brit, but he knows this cardinal rule of writing New York. His ingenious historical novel, Golden Hill (published in the U.K. last year) , is set in 1746, a time when spies, thieves, card sharks and crooked bankers jostled the innocent in the teeming streets of what's now Lower Manhattan. It's a place of dark alleys and twisted virtue where Damon Runyon's Guys and Dolls characters Nicely-Nicely and Angie the Ox would've felt right at home. The opening scene of Golden Hill is also ripped out of the classic New York story handbook: On a gloomy November evening, a ship sails into the harbor and a stranger disembarks. He's a handsome young Englishman named Mr. Smith, and he quickly makes his way to a counting house on Golden Hill Street. There,'Golden Hill' Recalls The Dark Alleys And Twisted Virtue Of 18th-Century NYChttp://klcc.org/post/golden-hill-recalls-dark-alleys-and-twisted-virtue-18th-century-nyc-0
71287 as http://klcc.orgMon, 10 Jul 2017 18:21:00 +0000'Golden Hill' Recalls The Dark Alleys And Twisted Virtue Of 18th-Century NYCMaureen CorriganThe title of Maile Meloy's new novel is misleading: Do Not Become Alarmed sounds like a suspense story. Granted, I did read it in two nights; but, while I'm a unapologetic fan of thrillers, Meloy's novel is something else, something trickier to characterize. I'd call it a very smart work of literary fiction that exposes how very thin the layer of good luck is that keeps most of us from falling into the abyss. Meloy begins her book with an epigraph from Teddy Roosevelt that warns: "Americans learn only from catastrophe, and not from experience." The two American families at the center of this story think they're setting off for a cruise down the California coast to Central America, but, instead, they're in for a catastrophic learning experience. Nora and Raymond are couple number one: she's white, he's black and a recognizable Hollywood actor. They have a little girl and an 11-year-old boy who seems to have a mild case of Asperger's Syndrome. Nora's cousin Liv and her husband Benjamin,2 Families Cruise Toward Catastrophe In 'Do Not Become Alarmed'http://klcc.org/post/two-families-cruise-toward-catastrophe-do-not-become-alarmed
70001 as http://klcc.orgThu, 15 Jun 2017 19:19:00 +00002 Families Cruise Toward Catastrophe In 'Do Not Become Alarmed'Maureen CorriganJourneys — near and far, into the past and even into near space — are the subject of the novels, memoirs and narrative histories that make up my summer reading list. Here are six books to escape with: Even if you can't get yourself to the solar eclipse's "path of totality" this Aug. 21, any of these very different books will get you onto the path of a totally good story. Copyright 2017 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Journeys near and far, into the past, and even into space are the subject of the novels, memoirs and narrative histories that make up our book critic Maureen Corrigan's early summer reading list. Here are her recommendations. MAUREEN CORRIGAN, BYLINE: There's still time to make travel plans for August 21. That's the date when a total solar eclipse will cross the continental United States, the first such eclipse in 99 years. The total eclipse can only be witnessed within a 70-mile-wide path called the path of totality whichSearching For A Summer Escape? These 6 Books Will Carry You Awayhttp://klcc.org/post/searching-summer-escape-these-6-books-will-carry-you-away
68821 as http://klcc.orgWed, 24 May 2017 19:09:00 +0000Searching For A Summer Escape? These 6 Books Will Carry You AwayMaureen CorriganRakesh Satyal's new novel checks off a lot of boxes, but its charm lies in the fact that it wears all of it various identities so lightly. This is an immigration story, a coming-out story and something of an old-school feminist story about a timid woman learning to roar. Yet, there's nothing preachy or predictable about Satyal's novel; rather, the most cumbersome thing about it is its title, which I've delayed saying for as long as possible. It's called No One Can Pronounce My Name, which sounds aggrieved when, instead, this is novel that invites readers to be amused. Satyal wants us all to laugh, together, about the comedy of errors that often typifies everyday life. No One Can Pronounce My Name is set in an Indian-American community in suburban Cleveland, Ohio. Ranjana is a middle-aged wife and mother whose son has just departed for college — Princeton, no less. Ranjana's husband is an out-of-shape academic who sports what she thinks of as the "common Indian male physique: second'No One Can Pronounce My Name' Is A Charming Take On Loneliness And Connectionhttp://klcc.org/post/no-one-can-pronounce-my-name-charming-take-loneliness-and-connection
68027 as http://klcc.orgWed, 10 May 2017 17:45:00 +0000'No One Can Pronounce My Name' Is A Charming Take On Loneliness And ConnectionMaureen CorriganMy timing has always been a little off with Elizabeth Strout. I've read and pretty much admired everything she's written, but, for whatever reason, the books of hers I've picked to review have been the good ones, like her debut Amy and Isabelle and The Burgess Boys , rather than the extraordinary ones, like Olive Kitteridge , which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. At last, though, I think I'm in sync with Strout's peak performance cycle. Anything Is Possible is Strout's latest book and it's gorgeous. Like Olive Kitteridge , Anything Is Possible reads like a novel constructed out of linked stories. In fact, it's hard to know exactly what to call this — a novel or a short story collection. In any case, these stories are animated by Strout's signature themes: class humiliation, loneliness, spiritual and sexual deprivation and, sometimes, reawakening. When Strout is really on her game, as she is here, you feel like you've been carefully lowered into the unquiet depths of quiet lives. Strout'Anything Is Possible' Explores The Unquiet Depths Of Ordinary Liveshttp://klcc.org/post/anything-possible-explores-unquiet-depths-ordinary-lives
67538 as http://klcc.orgTue, 02 May 2017 17:29:00 +0000'Anything Is Possible' Explores The Unquiet Depths Of Ordinary Lives